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Thursday July 19 11:57 PM ET

NEW YORK (AP) - The U.S. Polo Association has filed a $100 million lawsuit against fashion designer Ralph Lauren for allegedly using a campaign of intimidation to sink the association's apparel line.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in federal court, accuses New York fashion house Polo Ralph Lauren of sending ``intimidating'' and ``threatening'' letters to retailers claiming that designs on some of the polo association's clothing infringed on Polo's clothing trademarks.

``We believe there is enough room in the world for Polo Ralph Lauren and the U.S. Polo Association to coexist,'' association lawyer Gerald Ferguson said.

Polo Ralph Lauren representatives did not return calls for comment Thursday night.

Wednesday July 18, 7:00 am Eastern Time

Morningstar.com By Pat Dorsey

Although I've been skeptical of the idea that retailers will get a big boost from the soon-to-be-mailed-out tax rebate checks, I ran across some interesting information recently that supports the pro-spending argument.

According to a recent research report from Parker/Hunter (a Mid-Atlantic regional investment firm), the tax rebate that occurred in 1975 spurred quite a jump in consumer spending. ``In May 1975, shortly after the IRS began sending rebate checks, retail sales advanced by 4.6% and personal consumption rose by 2.1%...Personal consumption continued to advance over the next several months. Today's tax rebate may lead to even stronger results than the 1975 rebate. The 2001 $40 billion tax rebate amounts to 0.4% of the annual gross domestic product (GDP), whereas the $10 billion Tax Relief Act of 1975 represented only 0.25% of the GDP.''

This is interesting, even though I'm still skeptical. (It just doesn't seem likely to me that people worried about their jobs will run out and buy a new wardrobe.) But let's say for the sake of argument that consumers do spend the bulk of their refund checks, rather than (gasp!) saving them or using them to pay off bills. The question then becomes whether this surge in spending will have any effect on retailing stocks.

On this, I remain unconvinced. For one thing, most retailers have been yammering about a second-half rebound for so long that the expectation of a second-half surge is already priced into their shares. It's not like the tax rebate is news, after all. Moreover, when first-quarter earnings were reported, very few retailers lowered their full-year earnings estimates, which means a rebate-generated surge is now almost required for them to meet Wall Street's expectations. In other words, lots of shopping will keep the shares afloat, but won't give them much of a boost.

More importantly, there simply aren't a whole lot of bargains to be had among retailing stocks right now, which means stock-market gains from a consumer-spending surge will be harder to come by. You can make a solid argument that, in an uncertain economic environment, it's discounters like Costco, Dollar General, Family Dollar, Target , and Wal-Mart that stand to benefit the most from the rebate checks. But the problem is that most of the discounters are fairly valued, at best. In fact, the only retailers that I can get terribly excited about are Limited and Jones Apparel Group.